I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.? 



i UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 




PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN; 



OR, 



AN APPEAL TO PARENTS TO PRAY CONTINU- 
ALLY FOR THE WELFARE AND SALVA- 
TION OF THEIR CHILDREN. 



BY THE 

Rev. WILLIAM SCRIBNER. 



WITH A PREFATORY NOTE 

BY THE 

Rev. L. H. ATWATER, D.D. 




PHILADELPHIA : 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 

/ *>3 , 







Entered according to Act of Con greBS^tn-ttjjeuyeag 1873, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



LC Control Number 




tmp96 027860 



WE8TCOTT & TflOMSOH, 

Mereetypers and Eleetrotypers, Philadcu 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



rjIHE following appeal to Christian 
-*- parents to abound in prayer for 
the regeneration, early piety and uni- 
versal welfare of their children is 
plain, thorough and earnest. Its ob- 
ject is of incomparable moment. Al- 
though at first sight this duty might 
seem to be among those commonplaces 
in religion which are too obvious to 
need argument or enforcement, yet it is 
equally among those which, in part, 
from their very indisputableness, are 
liable to be forgotten or neglected. It 
is, moreover, beyond doubt that there 
has been a wide though often secret 



4 PREFATORY NOTE. 

skepticism in regard to the prospect or 
possibility of conversion and real re- 
ligion in childhood and early youth 
which has often checked and prevented 
prayer and effort for this great blessing. 
We are glad to believe that this is less 
now than in the last generation. Great 
good has been done by timely discus- 
sion relative to the true import of in- 
fant baptism and the status and training 
it implies in the case of the children of 
the covenant. Many of Christ's lambs 
are now within his visible fold by open 
profession proceeding from hopeful 
conversion. We trust that the propor- 
tion of such will be vastly increased. 
Nothing can more contribute to this 
great result than a great increase of 
parental prayer for the regeneration of 
children, along with the efforts for the 
right training and nurture of these 



PBEFATORY NOTE. 5 

children wliicli such prayer will natu- 
rally inspire. We are confident that 
this unpretending volume will greatly 
further this precious cause. 

L. H. Atwater. 
Princeton, Nov. 15, 1872. 
1* 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 



rpHE early conversion of all the chil- 
-*- dren of the Church should be in- 
tensely desired and incessantly prayed 
for. How great are the advantages 
which would attend the early renewing 
of their minds ! 

It would shorten the period of their 
complete subjection to the dominion of 
sin. How can a holy soul, how can 
one in whom there are daily breathings 
after God, be satisfied to have his child 
continue for years in bondage to sin, 
even supposing a certainty may exist 
that conversion will take place before 
death ? One would think that even that 

7 



8 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

joy which the Christian parent feels at 
beholding the return of the long-lost 
prodigal would be mingled with sadness 
at the thought of the years previously 
spent by him in the service of Satan 
and in enmity to God. Many who live 
to maturity before they pass from death 
unto life continue during the remain- 
der of their days to suffer from the ef- 
fects of evil habits to which they were 
addicted in the season of youth. 

Moreover, unless those habits which 
none but a true Christian ever prizes — 
habits of daily and systematic prayer, 
resolute conflict with sin in its various 
forms, liberality, watchfulness over self 
and others of a similar kind — are formed 
in the morning of life, it is exceedingly 
doubtful whether they will ever be- 
come strong, even supposing the effort 
to form them be subsequently made. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 9 

As for the graces of the soul, as love, 
faith and humility, there is no possibil- 
ity of their being exercised through a 
long series of years if conversion does 
not take place until late ; consequently, 
any great attainments in holiness are 
not likely to be witnessed. 

Although the saving conversion of 
the children of the Church is an object 
worthy of intense desire, yet it is a 
thing not often looked for. Professing 
Christians too frequently have little 
or no expectation that their offspring 
will experience the renewing influences 
of God's Spirit at a tender age. Nor is 
it often the case that members of the 
Church who are not parents expect to 
see the churches enlarged by the addi- 
tion of converted children. Even min- 
isters, while they may desire and pray 
for the divine blessing on their labors, 



10 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

and may even be watching for it, sel- 
dom confidently look for the conversion 
of the little ones. Such a thing would 
fill them with joy, but they are not ex- 
pecting it as a matter of course. There 
are persons, it may be, in the Christian 
congregation, who are thought to be 
not far from the kingdom of God, and 
who are daily expected to give evidence 
of having undergone a saving change, 
but they are not often children. Were 
a large number of these to come to 
Christ in the exercise of faith, within 
a short time, and express a desire to 
celebrate his dying love at the commu- 
nion-table, God's people would be filled 
with surprise. 

Yet all the means of grace have 
been bestowed upon the child which 
adults enjoy; the danger of staying 
away from the Saviour is frequently 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 11 

set before him, and lie easily compre- 
hends it. He is assured that God de- 
lights to hear prayer, and will give the 
Holy Spirit to all who ask for it. He 
knows that God has said, They that seek 
me early shall find me, and he knows 
that our heavenly Father regards even 
a child's procrastination in the matter 
of repentance and coming to Christ as 
a great sin. 

It may be said that Christians have 
learned not to expect things which God 
plainly shows by the workings of his 
providence he does not intend shall 
take place — that the fact itself that so 
few children of professors are actually 
renewed in childhood makes it evident 
that it is not in accordance with his 
will that they should be. It is a suffi- 
cient reply to this to say, that if the 
majority of professors were filled with 



12 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

the deepest longings for the early con- 
version of their offspring, if they hab- 
itually wrestled with God in prayer for 
the blessing, if they faithfully and con- , 
scientiously imbued their minds with re- 
ligious knowledge, if they continued to 
do all this unweariedly and with faith, 
and if, after all, scarcely any little chil- 
dren having such parents were brought 
into the fold of the good Shepherd, 
then it might afford evidence that God 
is unwilling that many should be re- 
newed at an early age. But as the 
case stands no such conclusion can be 
drawn. All that we are entitled to in- 
fer is that God does not see fit to con- 
vert at a tender age the children of 
those whose desire for the blessing is 
very faint, and who do not earnestly 
seek it in the use of means which are 
adapted to bring it about. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 13 

That it is the will of God that the 
early regeneration of the children of 
the Church should take place, and 
should be desired and expected by us, is 
plain from the command of the Saviour, 
" Suffer the little children to come unto 
me." Here is virtually a command that 
we desire their conversion while they are 
yet little children, that we expect it, and 
that we do all that in us lies to lead them 
to Jesus. He enjoins it upon us to look 
for and to strive to be instrumental in 
their early salvation, and he gives us to 
understand that our efforts shall not be 
in vain by adding that just such little 
ones are heirs and partakers of glory. 

That it is the will of God is also 
manifest from the fact that he has, as 
was said, bestowed upon our children 
all the means of grace which adults en- 
joy. He has — and how can we be suffi- 



14 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

ciently grateful for it? — rendered the 
truths which save the soul so simple 
that they may be comprehended by the 
youngest mind, and he has required 
us carefully to imbue their minds with 
those truths, on peril of his severe dis- 
pleasure. He commands them to pray 
for themselves, and he requires the 
Church to pray for them. Surely when 
these things are properly looked at, we 
are driven to the conclusion that our 
heavenly Father is willing that our 
children should experience in their 
hearts, while they are yet young, the 
converting power of his grace. 

The true explanation of the fact, that 
the early and manifest conversion of the 
children of the Church is not so fre- 
quent as to be looked for as almost a 
matter of course, is that parents devolve 
the work of laboring for their conver- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 15 

sion on others. Here is the sad mistake 
which many fathers and mothers make. 
They look to others to do the work 
which they themselves should perform. 
It is impossible for them to value too 
highly the faithful endeavors of minis- 
ters and Sabbath-school teachers to feed 
the lambs of Christ, but let them be- 
ware how they regard the labors of 
others, in the matter of their children's 
conversion, as a sufficient substitute 
for their own exertions to bring about 
that end. No Christian parent can be 
released from the obligation of striving 
by his own personal efforts to lead his 
children to Christ. He is not permitted 
to prefer the instrumentality of preach- 
ing to that of his own religious training 
of his little ones. 

The command that we bring up our 
children in the nurture and admonition 



16 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

of the Lord has but one meaning, and 
can be easily understood. As far as the 
children of believers are concerned, God 
designs that parental training should be 
the first and ordinary means of their 
salvation. They can no more be regen- 
erated and saved without the use of 
means than can others, only in their 
case these means have a relation to the 
peculiar position which they occupy as 
children of the covenant.* There is a 

* In the last excellent narrative (1872) of the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States of America, in regard to the state of relig- 
ion within the bounds of that Church, occur the follow- 
ing words: "We are led to fear that the privileges of 
the Abrahamic covenant and the family obligations are 
too lightly esteemed among our people. Frequent men- 
tion is made of the Sabbath -school, but scarcely an ut- 
terance regarding home instructions. Is there not evi- 
dencein this that the true work and mission of the Sabbath- 
school is misapprehended ? Or, at least, does it not sug- 
gest to us the probability that parents are neglecting the 
solemn obligation imposed upon them by divine author- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 17 

special promise to bless to their salva- 
tion the prayers, the godly example and 
the teaching of their parents, or of those 
who fill the place of parents to them. 
The Church has always recognized this 
truth, and in all ages of her history 

ity, and constituting a part of the covenant, in leaving 
the instruction of their households chiefly to the Sab- 
bath-school teacher ? The teacher may or may not be 
faithful in his work, but in any case he is not a party to 
the covenant made with God, and solemnly ratified by 
the ordinance of baptism, concerning the members of 
the family. The Abrahamic covenant, existing to-day, 
as during the infancy of Isaac, in all its blessedness and 
power, has its significance and must produce its results 
through the family relation. It was to Abraham and 
his seed that the promises were made ; and, in like man- 
ner, through the whole history of the Church, the bless- 
ing to the household has been through the covenant 
with the parents. The privileges and the obligations of 
a covenant cannot be separated. Parents cannot come 
into the presence of God claiming that he shall bestow 
upon their children the blessings of the covenant when 
they themselves have wholly neglected to discharge the 
duties required of them by the very conditions of the 
covenant." 
2* 



18 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

her best and wisest teachers have ' 
sisted that her children are to be madU 
partakers of the benefits of Christ's re- 
demption through the use of these means 
by their own parents. That holy and 
successful minister of Christ, Richard 
Baxter, expressed the opinion that the 
time would probably come when almost 
all the children within the pale of the 
Church would become pious under pa- 
rental culture. He also says, "I doubt 
not to affirm that a godly education is 
God's first and ordinary appointed means 
for the begetting of actual faith and 
other graces. . . . And the preaching 
of the word by public ministers is 
not the first ordinary means of grace to 
any but those that were graceless till 
they came to hear such preaching. . . . 
The ordinary appointed means for the 
first actual grace is parents' godly in- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 19 

struction and education of their chil- 
dren." * 

The work to be done by parents in 
order to bring about the salvation and 
to secure the very highest good of their 
children includes — 

1. Religiously instructing them. 

2. Setting before them a holy ex- 
ample. 

3. Restraining them. 

4. Praying for them. 

It is only concerning the last of these 
duties — that of praying for their chil- 
dren — that I propose to say a few words 
to Christian parents in what here fol- 
lows. 

I simply desire to offer you some per- 
suasives to the faithful performance of 
this duty. The incentives which may 
well move you to intercede for them 

* Quoted in BushnelPs " Christian Nurture." 



20 PRAY FOE YOUR CHILDREN. 

earnestly and unceasingly are many and 
powerful. That which I would first 
urge you to make the matter of your 
perpetual supplication is their salvation. 
It is to be feared that very few faithfully 
pray for the salvation of their offspring, 
and it is certain that by many the duty 
is shockingly neglected. 



PART I. 

PEAYEE FOE YOUE CHILDEEN'S 
SALVATION. 



Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
dren, because their salvation is so great a 
prize that it is worth all the pains which 
your prayers to secure it for them may 
cost you. 

When the unconcerned sinner is 
thoroughly aroused to a sense of his 
lost condition, he feels that to gain his 
own soul, at any sacrifice, is a work of 
infinite importance, and with the great- 
est earnestness he sets about using every 
means to save it which the word of God 
directs him to employ. 

21 



22 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

An English nobleman, who subse- 
quently became an eminently useful 
Christian, thus describes his own case 
when his exposure to eternal death was 
first suddenly revealed to him : " It was 
at Brighton, 132 Marine-parade, about 
seven o'clock in the evening, that I re- 
ceived such a deep impression of eter- 
nity that the effect has continued to the 
present day, and by the blessing of God 
will remain to my dying day. I had 
just dressed for dinner, when the sight 
of the clothes which I had thrown off 
suddenly impressed me with the thought 
of dying, of undressing for the last 
time, of being unclothed of this body. 
I felt the terrors of dying unprepared 
in a degree approaching to reality. 
In the bed I saw, not a place of nightly 
repose, but a place intended to receive 
the dying struggle. In short, the pros- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 23 

pect of death was impressed on my 
imagination with overwhelming force, 
and not of death only, but of eternity, 
of the day of judgment, of an offended 
God and the sentence to eternal tor- 
ment. I felt the imperative necessity 
of preparing for death at any cost 
and any sacrifice. The prospect of 
heaven added little or nothing to my 
resolution. Safety was all I aimed at. 
This I felt was within my reach, and I 
grasped at it with the feelings of a 
drowning man. Salvation must be 
sought and attained, though the path to 
it lay through fire and water. No 
hardship seemed worth a moment's 
consideration in comparison with so 
great a prize." * 

Now, precisely the concern which we 

* "Memoir of Lord Haddo," fifth edition, page 19, 
London. 



24 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

feel about our own danger when we are 
at first truly awakened, we should feel 
with reference to the danger our chil- 
dren are in until we have good grounds 
for hoping that their souls are safe. 
We should feel that their salvation 
must be sought, though the path to it 
may lie through fire and water, for our 
children are a part of ourselves; and 
fearful as the thought is, it depends, in 
all probability, upon us, their parents, 
whether they are saved or not. We 
cannot throw off our responsibilities for 
them. Do you feel that the eternal 
ruin of your children is a possible 
thing — that it is most probable if you 
never pray for them? The fact that 
their souls are precious beyond all 
thought, that the loss of their souls 
would be inconceivably dreadful, that 
eternal life would be to them an infinite 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 25 

gain, and that your prayers may be in- 
strumental in saving them, should stir 
you up to the offering of incessant sup- 
plications in their behalf. Surely you 
must be convinced that their salvation 

from eternal death is worth all vour 

%j 

prayers and tears — all the agonizing 
earnestness which may accompany your 
intercessions for them. 

This is true if the declarations of the 
God of truth are to be believed. Had 
not the soul's salvation been precious 
beyond all conception, he would not, 
in order to secure it, have delivered 
up his own Son. Your children have 
just such souls as the blessed Saviour 
came to redeem. Pity for them indeed 
glowed in his heart when he gave him- 
self to die. If you are convinced that 
their souls' redemption has a value be- 
yond all price, can you shrink from the 



26 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

burden — if you regard it such—which 
importunate prayer for them would 
impose on you ? 

II. 

Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
dren, because fetv will pray for it if you 
do not. 

There is reason to fear that compar- 
atively few professing Christians inter- 
cede for souls whom they have not 
some very special reasons for being in- 
terested in. This is lamentable, for the 
world will never be converted to Christ 
until his people pray more for their 
fellow-men. Indeed, almost all the sup- 
plications offered by Christians should 
be intercessory. " To pray always/' 
says an earnest and eloquent writer, 
"is a hard precept, and one we can 
only come to by time and habit, as well 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 27 

as by gift and grace. But the thing is 
to find that the older we grow, the more 
we pray, and the more we pray, the 
more our prayer takes the line of inter- 
cession for the souls of others. 

" The inestimable privilege of prayer 
is given us not merely for our own ne- 
cessities, but that we may use it for the 
temporal and spiritual good of others." 

God expressly commands us to 
make intercessory prayer. I exhort, 
therefore, that, first of all, supplications, 
prayers, intercessions and giving of 
thanks be made for all men.* This 
command is too often forgotten. As for 
singling out souls in order to make 
them the subjects of prayer, very little 
of this is done, and those who are 
thus singled out are generally persons 
thought to be of importance in the 

* 1 Tim. ii. 1. 



28 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

Church or in the world. Your chil- 
dren will probably, therefore, be passed 
by in those intercessions in which 
highly favored ones are particularly 
remembered by God's praying people. 

Oh, then, seeing that few, if any, in 
the Church of Christ will be faithful to 
them in this respect, let them have the 
benefit of your own perpetual supplica- 
tions. Plead with the Saviour to give 
them his Holy Spirit. Come to God 
for this blessing with holy boldness, 
with earnest wrestlings, with arguments 
and tears. Say not that you truly love 
them if you find it too much trouble 
thus to entreat for them the blessings 
which their souls imperatively need. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 29 

III. 

Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
dren, because none others can pray for 
it as you can. 

We may desire an interest in the 
prayers of a stranger, but we covet 
still more the intercessions of one 
who loves us, and who thoroughly 
understands our character and wants. 
We know that such a one is able 
to pray for us as no stranger can. 
In like manner, your great love for 
your children, the tender pity you feel 
for them and your knowledge of their 
disposition, wants and trials qualify 
you to plead with God in their behalf 
with an importunity and an earnestness 
which can take no denial. 

Even ungodly fathers and mothers 
cannot but long to have their offspring 
saved — even such cannot bear the idea 

3* 



30 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

of their being for ever lost. But what 
words can at all express the profound 
anxieties of pious parents for their 
children ? " If we turn our eye to her 
who is pre-eminently the parent — if one 
can earn the title by intensity of pain 
and love — the mother has a tenderness 
toward her offspring which she has 
long since concluded to bury in silence 
or utter only in prayers, since she well 
knows no language of hers can ever ex- 
press it." 

It was as a parent that Jacob prayed 
when he wrestled with the angel. No 
doubt, as he continued to weep and to 
make supplications, he found great en- 
largement in prayer. No doubt he 
thought of the oft-repeated promises to 
Abraham, to Isaac and to himself, and 
prayed for the coming of Him in whom 
all nations should be blessed, who should 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 31 

reign over the house of Jacob for ever, 
and of whose kingdom there should be 
no end. But that which imjDelled him 
to begin to pray was his fatherly anx- 
iety. It was the perilous condition 
which his children were in, which first 
drove him to the mercy-seat, with the 
strong resolve that he would not be de- 
nied. God knows the tender and anx- 
ious love of a parent, and therefore he 
has promised his people that if they 
will be faithful as parents he will con- 
vert and save their children for ever. 
Know, therefore, that the Lord thy 
God, he is God, the faithful God, which 
keepeth covenant and mercy with them 
that love him and keep his command- 
ments to a thousand generations.* 
When he would convince us of his 
willingness to hear prayer, he has 

* Deut. vii. 9. 



32 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

framed an argument founded on this 
parental love. That argument is that, 
if our heavenly Father is more willing 
to bless us than parents are to give 
gifts to their children, he must be will- 
ing indeed. Repeated acts of prayer 
become in time a habit of prayer, and 
rest assured that none can so easily ac- 
quire the habit of interceding for your 
children as you can. 

IV. 

Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
dren, because your omitting to do so will 
he perilous to them and to you. 

It should not be forgotten that our 
heavenly Father makes a distinction 
between those who try to fulfill their 
parental obligations and those parents 
who are altogether unfaithful. You 
must use the means which he has ap- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 33 

pointed to prevent the ruin and to se- 
cure the salvation of your little ones, 
and not one of these exceeds in import- 
ance the offering up of prayer daily in 
their behalf. If you fail in this, they 
remain in fearful peril. 

The danger to yourselves also is great, 
for by your wicked omission you incur 
the displeasure of God. He is not an 
indifferent spectator of your neglect. 
It is not to unfaithful, prayerless pa- 
rents that his exceeding great and pre- 
cious promises are addressed, but " the 
mercy of the Lord is from everlasting 
to everlasting upon them that fear him, 
and his righteousness unto children's 
children, to such as keep his covenant, 
and to those that remember his com- 
mandments to do them."* 

It is a dreadful thought that multi- 

* Ps. ciii. 17, 18. 



34 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

tudes of souls have perished who would 
have been saved had their parents faith- 
fully prayed for them. Such parents 
have gone into eternity with the blood 
of their children on their skirts. The 
great want of your children is faith; 
without faith they cannot be saved. 
But you have no right to expect that 
God will bestow this gift upon them if 
you do not seek it for them. By a life 
of impenitence and unbelief they may 
do dreadful and lasting injury, and 
such a life they will be likely to live, 
should they continue in the world, un- 
less you pray for them. They are sur- 
rounded by evil influences and they are 
fallen creatures, and they need to be 
protected from these evil influences by 
the power of God, and no less do they 
need to be inwardly restrained, enlight- 
ened, controlled, purified and guided by 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 35 

the Holy Spirit. These wants are very 
great and pressing. Therefore ask God 
earnestly and importunately to supply 
them. 

V. 

Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
dren, because you will then find it easier 
to perform other parental duties on the 
performance of which God has condi- 
tioned their salvation. 

The Bible clearly makes known what 
those duties are which God requires of 
parents. They are required to teach 
their children diligently the truths of 
his word, and to accompany and enforce 
this instruction by wholesome restraint 
and the light of a holy example. 

They cannot commit this work to 
others. It is the parent himself who is 
commanded to bring up his own chil- 
dren in the nurture and admonition of 



36 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

the Lord.* God commends Abraham 
for fulfilling himself his own parental 
duties. "And the Lord said, shall I 
hide from Abraham that thing which I 
do, seeing that Abraham shall surely 
become a great and mighty nation, and 
all the nations of the earth shall be 
blessed in him ? For I know him, that 
he will command his children and his 
household after him, and they shall 
keep the way of the Lord to do justice 
and judgment.''^ 

When God says to parents, " These 
words which I command thee this day 
shall be in thy heart, and thou shalt 
teach them diligently unto thy children, 
and shalt talk of them when thou sit- 
test in thine house, and when thou 
walkest by the way, and when thou liest 
down, and when thou risest up/'J how 

* Eph. vi. 4. f Gen. xvii. 17, 18. J Deut. vi. 6, 7 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 37 

plain it is that lie expects parents to be 
the instructors of their own children ! 

And why should they not be ? What 
more natural than that Christian fathers 
and mothers should themselves under- 
take the work instead of depending on 
others to do it for them ? How much 
greater is the advantage which a parent 
possesses than any other person can 
have in his constant intercourse with 
his child and his hold on its confidence 
and love ! 

This work of training up your own 
children in the nurture of the Lord 
has been given to you by God. It is a 
great work, and nothing can sustain you 
under the burden like the offering up of 
prayer for your little ones, believingly, 
earnestly and perseveringly. Pray, then , 
for them — pray for them early and late 
and without ceasing. God will an- 



38 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

swer your supplications by inclining you 
by his grace to use his appointed means 
for promoting their spiritual good, and 
by wonderfully assisting you to employ 
those means. Moreover, it will be seen, 
should their lives be spared, that the 
labor expended in their faithful train- 
ing has not been in vain. Some who 
are to be commended for their perse- 
vering efforts to impart religious in- 
struction to their children, and for the 
mingled kindness and firmness with 
which they control them, neglect too 
much to pray for them. No doubt 
this is the reason why many children, 
who have been carefully taught and 
governed, disappoint parental hopes. 
Too little prayer, especially believing 
prayer, was offered for them. We may 
not be able to tell why it is so, but it 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 39 

is nevertheless a fact, that some bless- 
ings seldom come except in answer to 
importunate, prayer. One of these is 
the early conversion of our children. 

VI. 

Pray for the renewing of the souls of 
your children, because prayer alone can 
call into exercise that divine power in 
their behalf which is absolutely neces- 
sary in order that the means which you 
may employ for their salvation may not 
be used in vain. 

That a radical change must be 
wrought in their souls, that they must 
be quickened or raised to life, born again, 
created anew, you feelingly acknow- 
ledge, because you believe that their nat- 
ural state is a state of spiritual death. 
But what is to effect the great change 
which is so indispensable ? What is it 



40 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

which can make them new creatures 
and impart to their souls a divine spir- 
itual life ? Not Christian nurture, 
which is to be faithfully used as a 
means and the neglect of which might 
be ruinous, but the mighty power of 
God, and that alone. Only the exceed- 
ing greatness of God's power which 
raised Christ from the dead can 
quicken their souls and cause them to 
live the spiritual life. 

But regeneration is not the whole of 
religion. The principle of spiritual 
life, when newly implanted in them, is 
but feeble. Only as it is fed by the 
truth can it be maintained and strength- 
ened. Our Saviour prays, Sanctify 
them by thy truth. But although the 
knowledge of the truth and constant 
progress in that knowledge are necessary 
in order to sanctification, yet sanctifica- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 41 

tion is still to be recognized as the 
work of God's Spirit. The Spirit does 
indeed use the word as his instrument 
in producing holiness of heart and life, 
still, it is by his agency, from first to 
last, that any believer grows in grace. 

Thus does your absolute dependence 
and that of your child on the influ- 
ences of the omnipotent Spirit appear. 
Thus plain it is that, however long and 
earnestly you may persevere in using 
means (which, indeed, must not be 
neglected) for the saving conversion of 
your offspring, yet all will be in vain 
unless the third person of the Godhead 
works in them to will and to do. The 
total spiritual death of the soul renders 
the mere use of means utterly power- 
less, and nothing short of the putting 
forth of the same almighty power 
which wrought in Christ can raise it to 

4* 



42 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN". 

life — can make it the possessor of a spark 
of holiness. 

Seeing that this is so, how sincere 
and profound should be your gratitude 
to God that he has pointed out a way 
by which you may secure the exertion 
of this divine power in their behalf! 
He has taught you that prayer for the 
efficacious operation of the Holy Spirit 
on their hearts will certainly be heard. 
Thousands of believing parents have 
tested this gracious promise with suc- 
cess. Their prayers have had power with 
God, and have prevailed, and yours will 
also prevail if you intercede with faith, 
if you pray always and do not faint. 
How wonderful that prayer should have 
efficacy to secure the almighty energy 
of the blessed Spirit for our children's 
good ! It is owing to the infinite con- 
descension of our God. 



PEAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 43 

Let us show how exceedingly we 
prize God's condescending love by con- 
tinually seeking the great blessing 
which he encourages us to seek ; and 
if any have children who have long 
been wanderers from the fold, let them 
persevere in praying for them to the 
very last, for it is impossible for them 
to be so hardened that God cannot 
change their hearts with infinite ease. 
And nothing but believing prayer can 
secure the exertion of his power to 
effect the change. 

VII. 

Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
dren, because by their salvation., granted 
in answer to your prayers, the divine 
Saviour will be glorified. 

Jesus is the great deliverer. He is 
the deliverer of his people from eternal 



44 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

misery, and he is the author of their 
eternal blessedness. It was his love 
for them which constrained him to die 
for their salvation. When any are 
actually saved — saved in spite of the 
fearful difficulties in the w 7 ay and the 
opposition of Satan and all his hosts — 
his design in dying is so far accom- 
plished. 

Thus, whenever a sinner is saved, Je- 
sus is victorious — he is glorified, a new 
star is added to his crown. Besides, 
each soul snatched from the grasp of 
Satan and eternal ruin sings his praises. 
" New redeemed criminals from earth, 
saved from the gates of hell, enter the 
gates of heaven with a new song of 
praise in their mouths, and add to the 
ever-growing melody of which they 
shall never weary." They never rest 
day nor night, giving praise and glory to 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 45 

Him that sits on the throne, and the 
Lamb at his right hand. 

Should your children, in answer to 
your prayers, be added to the number 
of the redeemed, you see how their 
redemption will exceedingly glorify 
the Saviour. This motive should be 
stronger than any other which can in- 
fluence you to seek their salvation. 
The salvation of men should never be 
thought of apart from the glory of 
Christ. His exaltation is the highest 
end contemplated in the work of re- 
demption. Your love for him should 
be stronger by far than any other pas- 
sion of your soul. Not merely the sal- 
vation of your beloved children, but 
the glory of the blessed Saviour in their 
salvation, should impel you to pray for 
them. Nothing that can happen in the 
world is worthy of notice, except in so 



46 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

far as it has a bearing on the promo- 
tion of the glory of the Lord Jesus. 
Perhaps our prayers and labors for the 
conversion of our near relatives would 
more frequently be blessed to their sal- 
vation were we, in the efforts which we 
put forth, more influenced by the desire 
that our blessed Redeemer should be 
glorified. 

VIII. 

Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
dren^ because you have a strong encour- 
agement and incentive to do so in the ex- 
press promise of God that, if you are 
faithful to your trust, he will be their 
God, and will save them. 

The words which God spake to Abra- 
ham, when he entered into covenant 
with him and his seed, may be regarded 
as addressed to each believer individ- 
ually, and therefore to you. Why do 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 47 

you expect to be heard when you ask 
that you yourself may, during your 
life and at your death, receive benefits 
from Christ? Is it because God has 
promised you that he will be your God ? 
That his love for you shall never fail ? 
That he will never leave you nor for- 
sake you? That his Spirit which is 
upon you, and his words which he has 
put in your mouth, shall not depart out 
of your mouth ? That he will circum- 
cise your heart to love the Lord your 
God that you may live? Then you 
may just as much expect to be heard 
and answered when you plead for your 
children, for these promises of the cov- 
enant are not one whit less intended for 
them than for you. Indeed, they ex- 
pressly mention your children, as will 
be seen when they are read as they 
stand in the word of God : " As for 



48 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

me this is ray covenant with them, saith 
the Lord : My Spirit that is upon 
thee, and my words that I have put 
in thy mouth, shall not depart out of 
thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of 
thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy 
seed's seed.* The Lord thy God will 
circumcise thy heart and the heart of 
thy seed to love the Lord thy God that 
thou mayest live.f 

The covenant between God and each 
parent dates from the very moment 
when the latter, with penitence and 
faith, accepts the proffered salvation. 
It at once embraces his children, who 
now have its seal attached to them, and 
are to be watched over and cherished, as 
belonging to God and as entitled to all 
the benefits of membership in his 
Church. It would involve a contradic- 

* Isa. lix. 31. t Deut. xxx. 6. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 49 

tion to deny that the offspring of 
Christian parents are members of the 
visible Church, while admitting that 
they are introduced into the covenant 
into which their parents enter with 
God, and have a special interest in its 
promise. This promise holds out to 
faithful parents the expectation that 
their little ones will be renewed and 
savingly united to Christ at a tender 
age. 

To lead them to look for this is un- 
doubtedly what the promise of the cov- 
enant was intended to do. When they 
remember, in their supplications for the 
salvation of their children, to plead this 
promise, this is the precise thing which 
they are regarded by their kind and 
gracious God as petitioning for in be- 
half of their offspring — viz., that they 
may be the subjects of the regenerating 



50 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

work of the Holy Spirit in the very 
beginning of life. 

If, however, parental solicitude longs 
for clearer evidence than it sees of the 
existence of grace, the anxious mother 
would be guilty of no presumption 
should she fully believe that, in conse- 
quence of the divinely-established con- 
nection between the faith of parents and 
the salvation of their offspring, her 
faith will bring upon her children the 
blessing of the covenant. "The evi- 
dences, the fruits and manifestations of 
the Spirit's work in the infantile and 
childish mind, subject as that mind is 
to the restraints and training and relig- 
ious habits of a godly home, may be — 
must be in many cases — difficult to de- 
tect before their riper years and larger 
experience of sin and temptation and 
the world ; but the assumption of al- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 51 

most all the Churches of the Protestant 
world, based upon clear Bible revela- 
tions, is that the children of believers 
are regenerated and savingly united to 
Christ until the contrary is established 
in their subsequent life, and it is ex- 
pected that at an early age they will be 
admitted to the Lord's table. The 
agency of the Spirit, according to the 
promise, is taken for granted, and the 
children of the Church are to be looked 
upon and trained and treated as united 
to Christ, till they themselves disprove 
it by their own willful rejection of the 
covenant in which they were born, 
baptized and blessed. This, we say, is 
the underlying assumption of most, if 
not all, the Churches of the Protestant 
world." * 

* See an admirable tract, entitled " The Early Regen- 
eration of Sabbath-school Children," by the Rev. T. H. 



52 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

In view, then, of the relation which 
your children sustain to God and the 

Skinner, D.D., from which the above is quoted. Pub- 
lished by the Presbyterian Board of Publication. 

Presbyterians are not taught by the constitution of 
their Church that the children of professing Christians 
are first received into the Church when they become 
communicants. The u Directory for Worship" teaches 
just the opposite. Its language is, "Children born 
within the pale of the visible Church," etc. The chil- 
dren of believers are in the visible Church by right of 
birth. When those whose parents are professing Chris- 
tians are about to sit down to the Lord's table for the 
first time, a form of declaration and welcome is some- 
times read to them by the pastor in the presence of the 
congregation. But it is not necessary that any such 
form should be used, and many pastors prefer simply to 
announce the fact that the session have admitted to the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper such and such baptized 
persons. But when any form is adopted, and is read by 
the pastor in the presence of the congregation, it should 
make the truth emphatically prominent that the bap- 
tized ones about to become communicants have, from 
their birth, been members of the visible Church, and 
that the session, in deciding that they possessed the 
requisite qualifications for partaking of the Lord's Sup- 
per, did not receive them into the Church as if they 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 53 

covenant — in view of the fact that be- 
cause they are your children the grace 
which is promised to you is likewise 
promised to them — you are authorized to 
claim as much for them as for your own 
soul, you may just as much expect to 
be heard when you plead for their sal- 
vation as when you pray for your own. 
Whatever our gracious God has 
really promised he will do. His prom- 
ises bind him. This is one reason why 
you have power with God when you 
pray for the salvation of your off- 
spring. Another thing which gives 

were the children of unbelievers. A formal public pro- 
fession of faith before partaking of sealing ordinances 
is only required by our Directory for Worship of un- 
baptized persons. Its language is, "When unbaptized 
persons apply for admission into the Church, they 
shall, in ordinary cases, after giving satisfaction with 
respect to their knowledge and piety, make a public 
profession of their faith in the presence of the congre- 
gation, and thereupon be baptized." — Directory, Chap, IX. 
5* 



54 PRAY FOE YOUR CHILDREN. 

you power with liim when you pray is 
his infinite love for you. We do not 
deserve to be the objects of his love, but 
it nevertheless remains true that God's 
love for his people influences him to 
show kindness to them, and to answer 
their petitions. It is the nature of love 
to have a constraining power over him 
who is the subject of it. It constrains 
the person loving to be kind to the one 
who is beloved, to minister to his ne- 
cessities and to grant his reasonable re- 
quests. Indeed, we know that our Sa- 
viour would never have died for his 
people had not his infinite love for them 
constrained him to do so. Because, 
therefore, God loves his own people 
with a love which passes knowledge, 
they cannot importunately plead for 
such a thing as the salvation of their 
children without having power with 



PRAY FOE YOUR CHILDREN. 55 

him, and prevailing. In addition to 
this, his love for them causes him to 
have a tenderness for their children. 
They also are beloved by him and 
are dear to him for their parents' 
sakes. 

IX. 

m 

An instance of God's faithfulness in 
fulfilling his promise to hear the prayers 
of parents for the salvation of their 
children. 

Multitudes of examples are on record 
which show how faithful God is to the 
covenant he has graciously entered into 
with his own people. We desire, be- 
fore leaving this part of the subject, to 
present a touching instance of this 
kind, with all the particulars, of which 
we are well acquainted. The Holy 
Spirit's work can easily be discerned by 
all who read the narration. 



56 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN". 

The beloved child of whom we speak 
was a consistent communicant long be- 
fore his death, but the evidence which 
he furnished in his dying hours of hav- 
ing undergone a gracious change was 
more striking than any he had before 
given. No child was ever more impor- 
tunately prayed for, and in the dealings 
of God with his soul in his last hours 
his afflicted parents deeply felt that 
their many prayers in his behalf were 
abundantly answered. The exhibition 
of genuine religious feeling by dying 
believers, especially if such believers 
are young, has a power in it altogether 
peculiar — a fact which would of it- 
self render the little narrative, never be- 
fore published, worthy of preservation. 
We extract it from a letter written 
to the absent parents by a beloved rel- 
ative of Willy who watched ovei his 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 57 

sick-bed and constantly ministered to 
him until he breathed his last. 

" With deep sorrow, tempered with 
joy, I write to you this morning — 
with sorrow, because your dear boy 
William has gone from us nevermore 
to return ; with joy, because his going 
from us was so peaceful and full of 
Christian comfort. 

" Dear Willy was not willing to have 
you written to — though the doctor said 
it would be well — for fear of alarming 
you more than was necessary. All 
day Monday I watched him closely, 
and he had as comfortable a day as we 
could expect, for it was one of the hottest 
days of the season. Through the day 
he was hopeful, full of fun and patient 
as a lamb, being grateful for every lit- 
tle attention and so very considerate of 
my labor as almost to grieve me. But 



58 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

Monday night was worse than the day, 
and in spite of all we could do our poor 
boy felt it in its severity, passing it in 
restless tossing. His uncle sat with him 
the first part of the night, and I the 
latter part. 

"Tuesday morning showed a great 
change to the doctor, though not to our 
eyes, and Willy read it in his face, and 
asked me, f Aunt, what does the doctor 
say exactly V I answered, ' Willy, he 
says you are in a critical condition/ 
Said he, ' That means that he thinks I 
will not live, does it not V 

" All this w r as with scarcely any ex- 
citement, a little flush of the face, but 
no tremor of the voice. I replied, * I 
think it means that you are in danger, 
yet he is not at all hopeless ; but this is 
no more than you have known all the 
time. Is it not so, Willy V 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 59 

"He said, 'I know, aunt, you have 
told me all the while there was danger, 
but I have not really thought I should 
die, and now, if it be God's will that 
I should live, I would like to, and 
shall ; but if he wills otherwise, it is all 
for the best, for I know in whom I 
have trusted in health, and I know my 
Saviour will sustain me in death. But 
my poor father ; it will be a great blow 
to him to lose me, though he knows 
where to go for comfort and strength. 
I would love to see father and mother 
and the dear children. Aunt, the evil 
one has once or twice since I've been 
sick tried to tempt me to doubt my 
acceptance with God, but I dare not do 
it, for God has promised, and I dare 
not doubt his word. He has promised 
that he will accept all who put their 
trust in him; this I have done, 



60 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

and do still. I will not doubt. I know 
I am bought with a price — that is all- 
sufficient. What should I do now, if 
I had not made my peace with God 
while in health ? I could not do it now ; 
for although not suffering from pain, I 
am too weak/ 

" He asked me to read the fourteenth 
chapter of John, which I did, and it 
seemed comforting to him. He said, 
f 'Tis a fearful thing to be told you 
must die, but the blessed Saviour 
smooths all the terror away. Why 
have I not worked more earnestly 
for my Saviour while I had health ? 
I did know the way, but have not 
walked as steadfastly in that way as I 
now wish I had. All I have to regret 
is that I have not done more for Jesus, 
but I hope my death may be the means 
of doing the good I failed to accom- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 61 

olisli in life. I have no ill-will toward 

a. 

any, and freely and fully forgive all 
who have in any way injured rue/ 

" The doctor came in and told him he 
would call a consulting physician if he 
wished, and Willy said, ' Just as you 
please.' The doctor then talked with 
him, Willy questioning him. I did not 
stay in the room, but just as I came 
back, he asked the doctor to pray with 
him. This he did, and it was a great 
comfort to him, for he alluded to it 
several times during the day, as such a 
comfort to have such a physician. 
After consultation the physicians told 
him he was very ill, yet they were far 
from hopeless ; but much depended on 
his constitution ; that he must rest as 
much as possible and keep up good 
courage. 

"He said, 'I would like to talk to 

6 



62 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

each of the family/ He did so, calling 
for them as he wished, talking earn- 
estly but calmly to each. He then 
wished to be left quite alone, and 
he prayed audibly ; but much as we 
wished to listen to that prayer, we did 
not, and Willy was alone with his 
God. 

" He called me back and said to me, 
' Aunt, this has not been a shock to my 
spiritual nature, but it has to my nerv- 
ous system. I am almost over that 
now.' And indeed he was correct there, 
for he was the most calm of the family. 
There seemed almost a halo about his 
head — such peace and holy joy as I 
never saw but once before. As he 
wished to see the Eev. Mr. D., we sent 
for him and he came immediately and 
had a long interview with him. I know 
it was a great comfort to dear Willy, as 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 63 

he said so several times during the day, 
coupling him with his ' good doctor.' 

" All through the day he was quiet, 
taking short naps, frequently saying 
to himself, ' Blessed Jesus ; precious 
Saviour/ or quoting some passage of 
Scripture, and then falling right to 
sleep again. Several times he said to 
me, ' My Saviour's arm is a strong 
one to lean upon ; it is underneath me 
and round about me, sustaining and 
supporting me. It is a soft pillow for 
my head. Oh what a comfort to my 
soul ! So the day passed in holy quiet. 
I felt all day that I was on holy ground, 
getting glimpses of the other world, 
and I do believe that Willy's commu- 
nion with God was more close than 
mortal could enjoy and live. Oh how 
I did long for you and his father to be 
present that you might have the com- 



64 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

fort of that day, for tell as we may, we 
never can impart to you that calm rest- 
ing on the Lord. It was all on the 
Lord, for he said, ' My trust is alone in 
Jesus. I am not good. Jesus is all 
goodness ; in his merits alone I trust. 5 

" During the night of Tuesday he 
was for a few hours delirious, but 
Wednesday morning at five o'clock he 
was perfectly rational, and he remained 
so until his spirit left us at eight o'clock. 
Though, he could only answer us in 
monosyllables, he knew us till the very 
last. I repeated many passages of 
Scripture that he had seemed to select 
the day before, and he would say — it 
was all he could utter—' Yes, yes.' 

"I asked him, not long before his 
spirit left the body, 'Is the Saviour 
still near and sustaining you ?' • Yes.' 
1 Is he still precious ?' ' Yes.' ' Can 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 65 

you, now that you are actually passing 
through the dark valley and shadow of 
death, say truly, I will fear no evil, for 
thy rod and thy staff they comfort 
me?' Promptly he answered, ' Yes, 
yes.' I feel that I never stood nearer to 
God than during that day, and much as 
I would love to say to comfort you, I 
feel that his own words will do far 
more than any I could frame. 

" When Willy found he must die, he 
felt that he would like to die at home, 
though in the next breath he said, 
' 'Tis just as well, and better, as it is, for 
God so wills it.' He had been with us 
but a few days, but it was long enough 
for us to love him dearly, and we 
longed to know him better ; but we 
thank God that he gave us this short 
acquaintance with one who seemed so 
near to him. His message to all was, 

6* 



66 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

' Work now for the Master while you 
have life and health/ This was his 
message to his brothers and sisters and 
all his young friends." 

Have you, Christian parent, chil- 
dren still living whose godly lives fur- 
nish evidence which satisfies you that 
your many prayers for them are being 
answered ? Then you can never be 
sufficiently thankful for the favor you 
have received. Indeed, you cannot 
even comprehend the greatness of the 
blessing bestowed upon you. Yet your 
work for those thus spared to you, 
is not all accomplished. Continue to 
be faithful to the children who are with 
you, while you account as yours still 
those who have gone before you into 
heaven. 



PART II. 

THUS FAR AVE HAVE LIMITED OURSELVES TO 
REMARKS ON PRAYER FOR YOUR CHILDREN'S 
SALVATION. SUPPLICATING DIRECTLY FOR 
THEIR SALVATION, HOWEVER, IS NOT YOUR 
WHOLE DUTY. THERE ARE MANY THINGS BE- 
SIDES THIS CROWNING BLESSING WITH REFER- 
ENCE TO WHICH YOU SHOULD EARNESTLY PRAY, 
IN ORDER THAT THEIR HIGHEST GOOD MAY BE 
SECURED. 

I. 

Pray for your children, because you 
may then expect, as the result of your 
prayers, that the power of God will 
counteract in some measure the evil 
you have done them. 

Even the best of parents sometimes 
do their children harm, and many 
positively injure the young whom God 
has committed to their culture and 

67 



68 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

discipline, by defects of government. 
" We have seen the good influence of 
many a pious father frustrated by a 
sternness and severity, a harshness and 
austerity, a frowning and unsympathiz- 
ing distance, which, if it commanded a 
reluctant eye-service, commanded noth- 
ing better, and repelled the affections 
of his children not only from him, but, 
we fear, from the religion which he thus 
impersonated before them." You are 
warned against provoking your chil- 
dren to wrath. To administer poison 
to them would not be inflicting on them 
such harm as to nurture evil in their 
hearts by severity, partiality or in- 
justice. 

On the other hand, you may exceed- 
ingly injure, if not ruin, your child by 
a misguided tenderness and lack of 
conscientious authority. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 69 

Now, fervent and unceasing prayer 
for your offspring would have a power- 
ful influence in enabling you to avoid 
sins of government. It would be sure 
to be accompainied by faithfulness in 
every duty pertaining to your manage- 
ment and control of them. Thought- 
ful love for them, and an earnest desire 
for their real good, would take the 
place of mere fondness, and you would 
be led to avoid the extremes of harsh- 
ness and of hurtful indulgence. 

Even though you may not be charge- 
able with lamentable failure in the 
training of your family, yet, by the un- 
alterable law of the transmission of 
parental character, you are ever work- 
ing your own character into the " spirit- 
ual texture of the souls of your chil- 
dren/' so that their susceptible minds 
and hearts are, in some degree at least, 



70 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

influenced for evil by your imperfec- 
tions. If the appalling truth that your 
influence over your offspring is in some 
measure determined and proportioned 
by your true inward character alarms 
and distresses you, there is one thought 
which is capable of affording you com- 
fort. That thought is that your earn- 
est pleadings with God, with whom all 
things are possible, may be instru- 
mental in counteracting the injury you 
have inflicted on those so dear to you. 
The Spirit of God will not only quick- 
en to a joyous harvest the good seed 
sown in faithfulness and tears, but will 
prevent the bad seed from becoming 
deeply rooted. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 71 

II. 

Pray for your children, because there 
will be critical periods in their lives when 
without your incessant prayers, offered 
with reference to such times, they may 
be left to act most unwisely if not 
ruinously. 

As soon as they begin to choose and 
act for themselves in regard to the pur- 
suits and transactions of life, they will 
not unfrequently be placed in circum- 
stances in which the evil consequences, 
to themselves and those to whom they 
are dear, of their decisions and acts, 
will be terrible, unless in those decisions 
and acts they are divinely guided and 
blessed. 

That is a very important period in 
the history of the young when they 
are called to select their own employ- 



72 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

ments for life. Be much engaged in 
prayer that they may be divinely 
led to engage in those pursuits and 
occupations in which they can best 
glorify God and do the most good to 
their fellow-men. Who can describe 
the suffering often caused by the sad 
mistake which a young man makes 
when he chooses a different business or 
profession from the one for which he is 
most fitted ? How greatly blessed are 
they who, in answer to prayer offered 
by themselves and those who love them, 
have been led to devote their energies 
to that lifework which God intended 
should be theirs ! He may not intend 
that your children shall do great works 
and fill important places ; nevertheless, 
you need not doubt that he has some 
work or sphere for them into which 
they may be guided. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 73 

"God has a definite life-plan for 
every human person, girding him visi- 
bly or invisibly for some exact thing, 
which it will be the true significance 
and glory of life to have accomplished." 
But it is possible to take another place, 
and attempt another work, than those 
appointed. You can have no certainty 
that your children can escape such an 
evil if you do not pray often that they 
may be directed. 

The time may be distant when they 
will be of suitable age to enter into the 
marriage relation ; nevertheless, as you 
may be removed from them by death, 
with reference to so momentous a matter 
you should not neglect to pray. How 
evil and bitter, in thousands of instances, 
have been the consequences of entering 
into this relation without the blessing 
of God ! and when the children of 



74 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

Christian parents make an unwise choice 
and contract unhappy marriages, it is 
a sure sign that such parents failed to 
begin early to make this most import- 
ant matter a subject of earnest suppli- 
cation. 

That we should lay up prayers with 
reference to the future critical turns in 
the lives of our children will be evi- 
dent when we consider that " their ap- 
pointments and stations — yea, even their 
present and eternal happiness or misery, 
so far as these are influenced by their 
states and conditions in life — may be de- 
cided by the most minute and trivial 
events, all of which are in God's hand, 
and not in ours." * 

* Cecil. 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 75 

III. 

Pray for your children, because it 
will lead you to a better understanding 
of them. 

Fervent prayer incessantly offered 
for them, in which their special wants, 
as far as you know them, are spread be- 
fore God, will be sure to lead to greater 
watchfulness over them, to a closer 
study of their character and to a still 
more exact knowledge of their disposi- 
tions and wants. 

This intimate acquaintance with the 
character and needs of each of his 
children, on the part of the parent, is 
of the utmost importance. He should 
not only know the characteristics which 
ever belong to childhood, but he should 
be familiar with the distinctive quali- 
ties, the peculiar temperaments and 



76 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

the trials of his own little ones. He 
should understand the motives which 
most easily influence them, and what 
temptations are most likely to lead 
them into wrong-doing. He should 
make himself familiar with their sor- 
rows. He should know whether they 
are gentle, sensitive, keenly alive to 
sympathy, to ridicule, or the reverse; 
whether, owing to his own mismanage- 
ment, they may not lack confidence in 
his love for them and desire for their 
happiness. Men constantly misjudge 
each other, and parents sometimes en- 
tirely fail to understand their children, 
and make sad mistakes as to the mo- 
tives which actuate them. But if a 
thorough knowledge of your children 
is necessary, in order that you may be a 
good parent, you cannot fail, as already 
said, to gain that knowledge, if you 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 77 

faithfully intercede for them. You 
will be compelled to study their charac- 
ter and needs in order to intercede for 
them intelligently. 

IV. 

Pray for your children, because it 
will increase your holy desires with 
reference to them. 

It was said that our children may 
lack confidence in our affection for 
them. But, more than this, they may 
fail to see that we desire above all 
things their spiritual good. Perhaps 
the faintness of your desires for the 
spiritual welfare of your offspring often 
humbles and grieves you, but nothing 
would so increase your holy longings 
for it as prayer continually offered in 
their behalf. When we give utterance, 
while engaged in communing with God, 

7* 



78 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

to those desires which he himself has 
implanted in our hearts, we use the 
very means which, above all others, 
will increase their strength. If we 
cannot pray, even for strangers, with- 
out learning to love them, surely the 
more w r e commend our children to God, 
the stronger will our love for their souls 
become. Besides, in the act of pleading 
w 7 ith our heavenly Father to bestow 
spiritual benefits upon them, we are 
obliged to contemplate those benefits 
distinctly. This will greatly increase 
their value in our eyes. The more we 
think of them, the more precious will 
they appear to us, and thus will the de- 
sire be intensified that our children 
may be enriched by them. 

This steady increase of holy desires 
in your heart, with reference to your 
children, will prove an unspeakable 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 79 

blessing both to tliem and to you. It 
will shed a heavenly influence on your 
soul continually. It will react on your 
prayers for them, making those prayers 
still more sincere and fervent, and 
therefore more influential with Him 
who is the hearer of prayer. It will 
cause you to covet more and more 
for your children — and above every 
earthly good — the kingdom of God and 
his righteousness. It will strengthen 
all your Christian graces and make 
you holier in each of the relations you 
sustain in life. 

V. 

Pray for your children, because no 
other means will be so effectual in ena- 
bling you to overcome the difficulty you 
experience in talking with them on relig- 
ious subjects. 



80 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

Perhaps you often desire, and even 
resolve, to obey the injunction, " Thou 
shalt talk of these words to thy chil- 
dren when thou sittest in thine house, 
and when thou walkest by the way, 
and when thou liest down, and when 
thou risest up," but still you are silent. 
The free conversation is still postponed. 
The indescribable reluctance which you 
feel in talking with them about their 
souls' concerns is not overcome. 

You are not altogether insensible, it 
may be, to the loss which they are sus- 
taining through your neglect, for you 
have sometimes witnessed the deep im- 
pression made by religious truth on 
their tender minds ; and yet, day after 
day, you suffer the golden opportunities 
which belong to the age of childhood to 
go unimproved. Nothing is so adapted 
to remove this reserve as earnest, per- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 81 

sistent prayer, in which your child's 
every want is spread before God and 
specific requests are offered in its 
behalf. Pray thus, and the effect in 
opening your mouth will be sure to fol- 
low. Out of the abundance of your 
heart your mouth will speak. Your 
own reserve being overcome, the shy- 
ness of your children will disappear. 
How touching and instructive is the 
account of the interchange of thought 
between Leigh Richmond and his son 
Wilberforce, when the religious experi- 
ence of the latter first became the sub- 
ject of conversation between father and 
child ! 

"All reserve," writes the sister of 
Wilberforce, who gives the account, 
" was now banished from my brother's 
inind.* He opened his whole heart to 

* Leigh Richmond's " Domestic Portraiture." 



82 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

his father, told him minutely of all his 
past conflicts, spoke of his present com- 
forts and begged that he might be 
closely examined. He wished to sat- 
isfy his parent that his faith was scrip- 
tural and sincere. He seemed to go be- 
yond his strength in conversing, even 
to extreme exhaustion, and appeared 
very anxious to tell how God had en- 
lightened, converted, strengthened and 
comforted him. He would sit for hours 
with his dear father in the study, sup- 
ported in an easy-chair, telling him all 
he had gone through, entreating his 
pardon for the uneasiness he had occa- 
sioned him by his past silence, and ex- 
pressing his great joy at now being 
able to converse with freedom and min- 
gle their souls together in the delight- 
ful interchange of confidence. It was 
now that our beloved father was indeed 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 83 

comforted, and that he received a full 
answer to patient prayer." 

Leigh Richmond himself writes in 
regard to the joyful deliverance of both 
from this reserve, " My prayers are an- 
swered at last ; the door of utterance is 
opened, and I am truly thankful. All 
the nameless pangs of my mind during 
the last eight months have been almost 
blotted out of my remembrance by my 
present consolations." 

The removal of the difficulties in the 
way of free conversation with your 
children should be an object of earnest 
desire, and that desire should be accom- 
panied with fervent prayer. 



84 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

VI. 

Pray for your children, because you 
will thus secure for them divine aid in 
the efforts they may make to yield you 
their obedience. 

God requires of children submission 
to the parent's will, and implicit obe- 
dience, and all men regard the require- 
ment as a benevolent one. It should 
be the desire, as it is the plain duty, of 
fathers and mothers to assist their chil- 
dren to render obedience, but they fail 
to afford them this assistance when they 
neglect to exercise the authority with 
which God has clothed them. This 
is the reason why such omission is 
cruelty to the young. Unaided self- 
government is a task to which they are 
unequal. Authoritative control may 
be regarded as an aid afforded to the 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 85 

feeble resolution of the child, for 
his inclinations will overpower his 
sense of right and his good intentions. 
When conscience begins to reprove, a 
feeling of compunction and mortifica- 
tion renders him unhappy. Could he 
now settle down upon an authoritative 
injunction, the perplexing difficulty 
would be dismissed from his mind. 

The immature judgments of chil- 
dren are insufficient to hold in check 
their ardent and impetuous desires. 
Hence they are often hurried into mis- 
chief without a moment's reflection on 
the unhappy consequences ; and when 
the excitement has subsided, and the 
season of calm reflection returns — as it 
always will — the thought of the mis- 
deeds actually committed awakens com- 
punction and remorse. The sadness, 
and self-accusations so surely consequent 



86 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

upon their commission appeal strongly 
to parental sympathy, and should se- 
cure the prompt exercise of authority 
in wholesome restraint.* 

But children need more than mere 
human assistance, even though that 
assistance may come from wise and 
affectionate parents. They can no more 
perform their filial duties without help 
from God than you, without such help, 
can perform your parental duties. 
You pray, it may be, for supplies of 
grace, and you rely on such divine in- 
fluence to enable you to act well your 
part as a parent, but do you not 
strangely forget that your child is 
equally dependent on the Holy Spirit's 
power, and that without it he can 

* See an admirable treatise on family government 
by Rev. W. H. Bnlkely. Published by the Presbyte- 
rian Board of Publication. 



PKAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 87 

have no strength to fulfill the duties 
which grow out of the relations he sus- 
tains to you? You are solemnly bound 
to think of the dependence of your 
children on God's help, and earnestly 
to pray that that help may be afforded 
them in their endeavors to honor and 
obey you. 

VII. 

Pray for your children, because other 
parents, seeing your example, may be led 
to imitate you. 

Pray much for your children, and 
you will be sure to set a high value on 
prayer offered by parents for their off- 
spring. You will have faith in it as a 
means which all may use for obtaining 
good things for their little ones, and for 
securing their preservation from every 
real evil. Your appreciation of the 
value of parental prayer will rather in- 



88 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

crease than become weaker. In all 
your utterances of your deep convic- 
tions on the subject you will speak with 
energy. Your words will be spirit- 
stirring, and will have power to move 
other parents. Others will be more or 
less stimulated by your faithfulness, 
and to some you may be made an un- 
speakable blessing in the way of incit- 
ing them to the more zealous perform- 
ance of their parental duties. 

They who are familiar with the life 
of Philip Henry know that he was a 
constant intercessor for his children at 
the throne of grace, and his example is 
highly admonitory to most parents. 
His biographer says, " When his chil- 
dren were removed from him, he was a 
daily intercessor at the throne of grace 
for them and their families. The 
burnt-offerings were still offered accord- 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 89 

ing to the number of them all. He 
used to say, ' Surely, the children of so 
many prayers will not come to harm/ 
Their particular circumstances of afflic- 
tion and danger were sure to be men- 
tioned by him with suitable petitions." 
And his daily prayers for them were 
wonderfully answered. Probably there 
never was a family in which grace 
more remarkably reigned. It is said 
of the children of Robert Hall that a 
deep impression was often made upon 
their minds by their hearing him as 
they passed his study door commend- 
ing them by name with the utmost fer- 
vency to God, and entreating those 
blessings for each which in his judg- 
ment each most needed. 

8* 



90 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
VIII. 

Pray for your children, because they 
will often, should they continue in the 
world, have their times of need when 
the power of God alone can avail to 
help them. 

Disappointments, sickness, losses, 
cares, in short, adversity in various 
forms, will be sure to overtake them 
soon or late, and well will it be for 
them if you have anticipated these 
times of need by innumerable prayers 
offered in their behalf. 

There will be times of temptation 
when their souls will be in fearful 
peril. Is it possible that you have no 
anxious moments when you think of 
the temptations which will certainly be- 
set them, and to which inbred corruption 
will give such force — the allurements 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 91 

of the world and, above all, the snares 
of the evil one ? The spirits of dark- 
ness will assuredly do all in their pow- 
er to hurt them, and if possible will 
accomplish their ruin. We are ever 
surrounded by fallen spirits. Dream 
not that any soul is so favored as to 
escape their watchful efforts to destroy 
it. They never dejoart from any of us 
for a long season, and as fast as one 
plot to injure us fails they contrive 
another. We have no earthly friend 
who can protect us from their machi- 
nations, and you well know that you 
have no power to defeat their plans 
and contrivances to bring injury on 
your children. But your blessed Sa- 
viour is abundantly able to protect 
them, for all power is given unto him 
in heaven and in earth. They need no 
better protection than he is able to af- 



92 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

ford them, and lie will hear your 
prayers for them. Fail not, therefore, 
to entreat him to defend them from the 
malice, power and wiles of evil spirits, 
the agents of Satan, who are constantly 
around them. 

In all the perils which may beset 
your children, in all their times of 
need, their souls will be safe if they 
have the presence and indwelling of 
the Holy Spirit, and therefore let your 
supplications constantly ascend that 
they may never be forsaken by the 
Spirit, but may daily be the subjects of 
his restraining, enlightening and sancti- 
fying power. He would be their great- 
est benefactor who would succeed in 
leading you, their parent, habitually 
to seek for them the influences of the 
Holy Spirit. 

Are they still the slaves of sin, 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 93 

strangers to the new birth and unfit to 
die ? Pray that God will give them 
his Holy Spirit, and you pray for their 
quickening by almighty power, for the 
restoration of the lost image of God to 
their souls, for that which will be the 
beginning of their salvation. Are they 
already the children of God and sav- 
ingly united to Christ? Ask your 
heavenly Father to give them his Holy 
Spirit, and you pray that they may re- 
ceive larger measures of holiness, that 
their love to God and man may increase, 
and that they may have more faith, 
submission to the divine will, patience 
and gentleness under injuries, and holy 
courage and zeal in the service of 
Christ. 

Never approach the throne of grace 
to make mention of your own wants 
without remembering the wants of your 



94 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

children, who are no less helpless and 
needy than yourself. Entreat for them 
that they may obtain mercy, and that 
they may find grace to help in time of 
need. Death may be near to them ; 
they may soon be called to go through 
the dark valley. Surely that will be a 
fearful moment when their strength 
will fail and everything which now 
binds them to earth will be cut asunder. 
We should pray that our children may 
have grace to help in that solemn hour. 
This is our privilege. We may daily 
ask God to be near them in their last 
illness, and to enable them to face the 
king of terrors without fear. 

Hitherto nothing has been said in 
regard to the benefits which you your- 
self would reap from prayer faithfully 
offered for your children. Prayer is 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 95 

communion with God, whether it be an 
act of adoration, thanksgiving or con- 
fession, whether it be the offering up 
of desires for blessings for ourselves 
or others. If those for whom you in- 
tercede are your ow r n children, it is 
still the same — you are still commun- 
ing with God. If this is so, you are 
engaging in an act which will be 
sure to promote your growth in grace. 
To have communion with God is to use 
the most powerful of all means for in- 
creasing our spiritual life. 

Another blessed result would almost 
inevitably follow : you would be led to 
intercede for many others. Other souls 
who would be rejoiced to be remem- 
bered by you would be thought of and 
prayed for. Thus you would grow into 
the habit of supplicating for those not so 
intimately related to you as the mem- 



96 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

bers of your own family, until finally 
you would become confirmed in the 
habit of intercessory prayer. If the 
family relation of the household of 
faith is ever realized, it is in earnestly 
and affectionately commending our fel- 
low-believers to God. 

Says one who could speak from ex- 
perience in regard to this matter, " I 
have received as a most precious and 
unmerited gift the power of feeling 
the things of the flock of Christ as if 
they were my own. You cannot imag- 
ine the happiness of this feeling. I 
dedicate an hour every evening to 
prayer and principally to intercession. 
I generally begin with the thanks due 
to God for all that he has done for 
every one of his sheep on that day. 
It is impossible for me to tell you the 
great delight of thus mixing myself up 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 97 

with the people of Christ and of con- 
sidering their benefits as my own. The 
thought which transports me most is 
that of how many souls have been, 
perhaps, this day joined to the Church ! 
how many succored under temptation ! 
how many recovered from their back- 
slidings ! how many filled with consola- 
tion ! how many transported by death 
into the bosom of Christ ! I then try 
to pray for the sweet "we," and to 
think of the necessities of my Chris- 
tian friends. Besides, I have a list of 
unconverted persons for whom I wish 
to pray."* 

But our intercessions should go forth 
for the whole body of Christ, his en- 
tire Church, for the needy and the per- 
ishing everywhere — for all, in fact, who 

* " Memoir of Miss M. J. Grahani." Quoted in Dr. 
Hamilton's " Mount of Olives." 
9 



98 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

are capable of being benefited by our 
prayers. One reason why believers 
are not more joyful is, that they fail to 
perform those acts, the constant repeti- 
tion of which naturally tends to pro- 
duce joy in the soul. But especially, 
perhaps, is joy the recompense of inter- 
cession. 

"Heavenly joy is just the fruit 
which our blessed Lord bestows on 
such as devote themselves to interces- 
sion. This is very observable. There 
is a certain sunniness and light-hearted- 
ness about them for which there seems 
no ordinary cause, except that it is like 
the sweet lightening of the spirit which 
comes after a kind and unselfish action. 
This may partly be the reason. But 
there is another also. We see not the 
fruit of our intercession ; the spirit of 
prayer escapes out upon the earth, and 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 99 

is everywhere like the hidden omni- 
presence of God. It is out of our 
sight. Nay, it is not like a series of 
distinguishable works. We hardly re- 
member how much intercession we 
have made. Who can count the sighs 
he has sent up to God, or the wishes 
without words which the tongue of his 
heart has told into the ear of Jesus? 
And so, from the fruit being hidden, 
vainglory attaches to it less than to al- 
most any other act which the Christian 
can perform. Whoever, then, desires 
to joy in God, to be equable in all 
things, to be happy and prompt in 
serving Jesus, to be patient with life 
because of the desire of death, let him 
throw away himself and his own ends, 
and betake himself to intercession as if 
it were his trade." 



100 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

Let us resolve that, from this time 
forth, we will give ourselves more in- 
tently to the work of interceding for 
our children. Whether we pray for 
our offspring or not must decide what 
our distant descendants are to be, and 
what kind of influence those descend- 
ants will exert. Surely our fervent en- 
treaties for God's blessing on our chil- 
dren and our children's children would 
be offered without ceasing were we able 
fully to comprehend the far-reaching 
results of such entreaties. 

We have endeavored to present some 
of the incitements which may well stir 
up all parents to whose training God 
has committed little ones to plead for 
them incessantly. Let us remember 
that " there is nothing we can give to 
Christ which is so precious as our chil- 
dren. . . . One Joseph, one David, in 



PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 101 

a family may bless a whole common- 
wealth, and even succeeding genera- 
tions. It is chiefly in this way that the 
Church is propagated. In this way 
certainly it receives the most valuable 
part of its accessions, if that can be 
called an accession which is born and 
bred within its pale. Let the attentive 
reader ponder the undeniable statement 
that if all the children of all the evan- 
gelical Christians in America were con- 
verted to-day, our country would need 
nothing more to make it the happiest 
and most glorious nation that ever was 
on earth. This would be like millennial 
light ! What hope would at once break 
on all the land and on our prospective 
population ! There is, therefore, no 
blessing for our country which may be 
more reasonably prayed for than the 

9 * 



102 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 

Christian health and proficiency of our 
sons and daughters." * 

Let not Christian parents dare to de- 
volve on others the great work which 
God has especially committed to them. 
For, as has already been said, it is 
plainly liis will that believing parents 
should themselves be instrumental in 
the salvation of their own children. 

* " The American Sunday-School and its Adjuncts," 
by James W. Alexander, D. D. 



APPENDIX. 



The following interesting and sug- 
gestive rules were laid down by Cotton 
Mather, the eminent early New Eng- 
land divine, for the ordering of his 
domestic life, and especially for the 
discharge of his religious duties to 
his children. 

1. He poured out continual prayers 
to the God of all grace for his children, 
that he would be a Father to them, be- 
stow his Son and grace upon them, 
guide them by his counsel and bring 
them to glory. And in this action he 
mentioned them distinctly, every one 
by his name, to the Lord. 

103 



104 APPENDIX. 

2. He began betimes to entertain 
them with delightful stories, especially 
scriptural ones, and he would ever con- 
clude with some lesson of piety, bid- 
ding them to learn that from the story. 
Thus every day at the table he used him- 
self to tell some entertaining tale before 
he rose, and endeavored to make it use- 
ful to the olive plants about the table. 

3. When the children accidentally at 
any time came in his way, it was his 
custom to let fall some sentence or 
other that might be monitory or profit- 
able to them. This matter occasioned 
labor, study and contrivance. 

4. He betimes tried to engage his 
children in exercises of piety, and es- 
pecially secret prayer; and he would 
often call upon them, " Child, don't you 
forget every day to go alone and pray 
as I have directed you." 



APPENDIX. 105 

5. He betimes endeavored to form in 
his children a temper of benignity. 
He would put them upon doing services 
and kindnesses for one another and for 
other children. He would applaud 
them when he saw them delight in it ; 
he would upbraid all aversions to it. 
He would caution them against all re- 
venges of injuries, and would instruct 
them to return good offices for evil 
ones. He would show them how, by 
this goodness, they would become like 
the good God and the blessed Jesus. 
He would let them discover that he 
w r as not satisfied except when they had 
a sweetness of temper shining in them. 

6. When they had the use of the 
pen, he would employ them in writing 
out the most useful and profitable 
things that he could invent for them. 

7. The first chastisement he would 



106 APPENDIX. 

inflict for any fault was to let the child 
see and hear in him an astonishment, 
and hardly able to believe he could do 
so base a thing, but believing they 
would never do it again. He would 
never come to give a child a blow ex- 
cept in cases of obstinacy or something 
that is very criminal. To be chased 
for a while out of his presence, he 
would make to be looked upon as the 
sorest punishment in his family. The 
slavish way of education carried on 
with raving and kicking and scourging, 
in schools as well as families, he looked 
upon as a dreadful judgment on the 
world. He thought the practice abom- 
inable, and expressed a mortal aver- 
sion to it. 

8. He would often tell them of the 
good angels who love them, help them, 
guard them from evil, and do many 



APPENDIX* 107 

good offices for them, and ought not in 
any measure to be disobliged. He 
would not say much to them of the 
evil angels, because he would not have 
them entertain any frightful fancies 
about the apparition of devils. 

9. When the children were capable 
of it, he would take them alone in his 
study to pray with them. 

10. He found much benefit by cate- 
chizing the children. The answers of 
the catechism he would explain, with 
abundance of brief questions, which 
made them take in the whole meaning. 



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